20th birthday
by TJchaos
Summary: A short little humor piece about Narutos 20th birthday and how he meets an old obligation. The NaruHina romance was unintentional at first but it felt right when I started adding it in. Rated M for some drinking and a little language.
1. Chapter 1

A/N - As the others say Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. The only Naruto stuff I own at this time is several of the Manga books and the first two uncut DVD box sets.

For those reading my 'Nine Tails Fury' story, sorry about the delay. This story is something I've had running around in my head and is completely unrelated to my 'Fury' story. I do have about 7500 words done for ch. 12 of 'Fury' and will get back to working on that tonight. I just had to get this particular one shot out of my head.

This was originally intended to be a little humor piece, somehow I couldn't help but to weave some NaruHina romance into it.

20th

"NO!" Tsunade roared for what felt like the thirtieth time.

"Oh come on, Tsunade-sama! My birthday is only a few months away." Naruto pleaded.

"It's more like six months. So forget it. You are not of age and I am not about to contribute towards furthering your delinquency, you're already bad enough."

Naruto thought for a moment. "What if I promise you that I won't drink any of it? Well at least not until my birthday."

Tsunade scowled. "If you're simply doing this for Jiraiya I will be very disappointed in you and even more so with him."

"You're kidding right? As if I would give him anything like that. He already owes me a lot of money from our training trips if you ask me."

"The answer is still no."

Naruto had a sudden brilliant idea. "How about I buy it and you hold on to it for me until my birthday? I can trust you with it can't I?" He said with a sly grin.

"O.K. Naruto what are you up to?" Tsunade asked narrowing her eyes slightly.

"It's a special project I'm working on, kind of a secret you know. Please?"

"I'm probably going to regret this but as long as I'm holding on to it, then O.K." She finally relented.

"Great! Lets go then." Naruto exclaimed as he ran around her desk and started to pull her towards the door.

"Naruto! I've got a lot of work to do. I can't go running off right now."

"Give me a break already, you've been here all morning, you could use a break."

Tsunade relented and as Naruto led her off they ran into Shizune carrying an arm load of paperwork.

"Shizune, we'll be back shortly, I'm helping Naruto out with something." Tsunade called out as Naruto dragged her off down the hallway and out the front door of the Hokage tower.

"You're just looking to get out of work!" Shizune shouted out in vain to the already gone duo.

Naruto led Tsunade through the busy streets of Konoha, clearly knowing exactly where he was going. It didn't take long for the blonde ninja to lead the village leader to the largest brewer in the village. Entering first Naruto earned himself a glare from the man behind the counter.

"No underage sales Uzumaki!" The man yelled out before his eyes bulged once he realized that Naruto was quite literally dragging the Hokage herself into the establishment. "Godaime Hokage-sama!" The man exclaimed bowing deeply.

"I think you can make an exception this time." Naruto smiled. "What kind of bulk discount can I get anyway?"

"Bulk?" Both Tsunade and the salesman exclaimed.

"What am I not loud enough?" Narutos smile grew very wide.

"What could you possibly need so much sake for that you're looking for a bulk discount?" Tsunade asked.

"Didn't I say it's a secret? Besides you're holding it all anyway right. If you want you can come along when I need it." Naruto turned to the sales man. "So what's the largest single amount you sell any way?"

"Well we can go as high as a two hundred liter barrel."

"That sounds great!" Naruto looked thoughtful for a moment. "You wouldn't be have it in those plastic barrels that the whole top comes off of would you?"

It was the mans turn to look thoughtful. "Actually most of the rice we buy comes in those exact barrels. I guess we could rinse one out for you. It should hold roughly two hundred liters."

"That's great, how much for a barrel like that along with a liter bottle of honjōzō-shu?" Naruto asked.

The man ticked off figures in his head and with a glance to Tsunade he gave Naruto a very good price on his order. Naruto smiled and pulled out his beat up gama-chan wallet.

"Sold!" He called out as he opened his wallet and started counting out the money. The man disappeared into the back barked out a few orders and returned with a single bottle. Naruto handed him the money, took the bottle and handed it to Tsunade.

"Consider it a storage fee." Naruto smiled at the look of pleased surprise on Tsunades face.

Roughly fifteen minutes later one of the workers from the back wheeled out a blue plastic barrel full of the sake Naruto had ordered. Naruto beamed as he pulled out a scroll. Tsunade looked on with a slightly puzzled look that became outright confused as Naruto opened the scroll and she saw that it was a blank scroll. Naruto whipped out a writing brush and with surprising deftness began to fill a small portion of the scroll with symbols, most in a circular pattern leaving a blank circular area in the middle of all the writing. When he finished to his satisfaction Naruto drew on his chakra and performed a series of hand seals.

"Sealing jutsu!" Naruto called out. There was a flash of light and suddenly the barrel of sake disappeared as it was sealed into the scroll. Naruto rolled the scroll up in a snap, tied it closed and handed it to Tsunade.

"Not bad Naruto." Tsunade said with a satisfied grin.

Over the next several months Naruto would drag Tsunade off to the brewery, usually after a well paying mission, and buy another barrel for the scroll and a bottle for Tsunade. Usually Naruto continued to buy honjōzō-shu but he would occasionally buy a barrel of Nigori, roughly every fifth barrel.

This continued until the chill air of the beginning of October filled the air.

"This is going to be the last barrel old man." Naruto said with a smile. "Thanks for everything!"

"Naruto, I'm dying to know, just what are you planning on doing with all of that sake? You've got something like two or three thousand liters of the stuff." The man asked.

"It's still a secret but if you want to know you can meet me at the training ground near the memorial stone around six pm on October 10th."

"You know he's right Naruto that is a lot of sake." Tsunade said as she looked thoughtful. "You're not planning some sort of bizarre party with a few thousand of your clones are you?"

"Please! Do I look like ero-sennin? You're going to be there yourself and it's only a few days away." Naruto said as he finished sealing the latest barrel of sake into the scroll and handed it to her.

"Well I'm sure this is going to be interesting, you must have spent a few years worth of your salary on all that sake."

"I don't think it was that much. Doesn't matter, it'll be worth it." Naruto said with a smile as he took off out the door.

Tsunade sighed as she tucked his sake scroll into her vest along with the bottle he had given her.

"I guess I'll see you on the 10th then?"

"You better believe it, there's no way I'm going to miss finding out what he's going to do with all that sake." The man smiled as Tsunade left and headed back to the Hokage tower.

The next several days passed rather quickly and the tenth of October rolled around. Naruto spent much of the day keeping a low profile. Although the normal celebration of the fox's defeat by the Fourth Hokage had seemed to be getting a little smaller each year there were still plenty of older people who were more than willing to send hateful glares Narutos way. He changed his normal training area to one of the more remote areas and spent the morning working more on his stealth techniques in order to help maintain his typical October tenth low profile. Naruto finished his morning training regime and decided to head to Tsunades office to collect his sake scroll before grabbing some lunch. Despite trying to not be noticed by everyone he figured there was no way he'd pass up Ichiraku's on his birthday.

"Remember 6:00." He said to Tsunade as she gave him the scroll, a short time later.

Three bowls of ramen later he left his favorite ramen stand, well actually it was the only ramen stand in Konoha he ever went to. A quick transformation to look like Iruka let him wander back to his apartment without anyone harassing him. He spent about an hour or so cleaning himself and his apartment up with a quick shower and a change of clothes. Checking the clock he saw that he had four hours to kill. He planned on another stop at Ichiraku's around 5:00 but that still left him with three hours to kill. He had half convinced himself to catch a movie, something he rarely did, when someone knocked on his door. He was somewhat surprised to see his friend Hinata standing there looking uneasy.

"H-happy birthday, Na-Naruto-kun." The poor girl stammered as her cheeks colored slightly and she held out a small box.

"Hinata-chan?" He asked puzzled as he noticed her cheeks grew a deeper red. "Oh, I'm sorry, please come in."

'_Hinata-chan? He has never called me that before.'_ The girl thought to herself. "I wanted to give you this for your birthday."

"Oh, you didn't have to but thank you." He said softly as he accepted the small box from her. With a glance to her first he started to unwrap the small thin rectangular box. Inside he saw that it was a silver necklace with a silver Konoha leaf emblem pendant.

"It's beautiful Hinata, thank you." He told her as he took it out of its box and put it on. The leaf symbol hung from his neck just above the crystal he had gotten from Tsunade.

"You are welcome Naruto-kun." Hinatas heart raced but she thought she would leave while she was ahead of this particular game. "I should go, I-I don't want to disturb you." She stammered out and turned to leave.

"Please, don't go." Naruto was struck with sudden inspiration. "I was just thinking about catching a movie, how would you like to come with me?" He asked her.

Hinatas faced suddenly turned bright red, causing Naruto to worry about her health.

"Umm…" She started to say but couldn't find the words to continue.

"Well if you don't want to, I understand." He said with a bit of sadness.

Hinata nearly panicked at his words and detecting that sadness she found the courage to speak to him. "No!" Her eyes opened wide at the force in her own words. "I'm sorry Naruto for not being more clear but I would love to go to the movies with you." She completely amazed herself by saying that. Her complexion returned to normal

"Great, it'll be a date then!" Naruto exclaimed as he grabbed her hand and nearly bounded out the door. "Afterwards you can join me for some ramen too."

The redness flooded back into her face at his words. _'Date? Did he really say date?'_ She thought not believing her own ears as he dragged her out to the street and off to the theater.

The next few hours were something of a blur for the young woman. Naruto insisted that he pay for her ticket, stifling any argument from her by claiming it was his birthday and that she shouldn't argue with him. They missed the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Naruto claimed that it didn't matter, saying something along the lines that all these samurai/romance movies were all basically the same. Besides he informed her, he had an important appointment at 6:00 so waiting for something else to start wasn't an option. Naruto again insisted that he pay for their popcorn and drinks. By that time Hinata wasn't about to try arguing with him again. She got a small thrill each time their fingers brushed against each other when they reached for more popcorn. Before she realized what was really going on the movie was over and she couldn't remember any of it. Naruto was simply bouncing along as he led the blinking Hinata over to the Ichiraku ramen stand. She was amazed as he nearly inhaled four bowls of ramen in the same amount of time that it took her to finish one.

Looking at the clock on the wall he spoke out.

"Not much time left."

"Oh." Hinatas euphoria suddenly deflated as she realized that the best day of her life was about to end.

Naruto looked at her intently, he had detected a thinly veiled sadness in that single word.

"Would you like to come with me Hinata?" He asked.

"I-I wouldn't want to impose on your appointment." She answered quietly.

"Hey remember it's my birthday, trust me you wouldn't be imposing."

"Well if I'm not going to be a bother or anything." She said softly.

"Hinata, you are never a bother to me." He said with a small laugh. "Come on. We're running short on time." He grabbed her hand and led her off to the training areas.

Before long they were standing before the three logs where he had fully become a genin. He smiled to himself as he remembered being tied to the center log.

"Naruto! You had better not have any bad intentions with Hinata there." Tsunades voice rang out as she entered the clearing with the salesman from the brewery along with Shizune who was holding Ton-Ton.

"Give me a break granny." Naruto said while rolling his eyes.

"Godaime Hokage-sama!" Hinata exclaimed and bowed deeply.

"Relax Hinata, its after hours, call me Tsunade please." Tsunade said.

"Sorry, Tsunade-sama." Hinata said her cheeks coloring slightly.

"So just what are you doing with Hinata here anyway? I take it she doesn't have anything to do with all that sake you've been buying does she?" Tsunade practically glared at Naruto.

"No of course not, Hinata being here is simply a happy accident." Naruto smiled broadly. "Actually she's my date for the day."

"Your date?" Tsunade was completely stunned. "Does that mean you finally figured it out?" She asked.

"Figured what out?" Naruto asked completely confused.

"I guess not." Tsunade said as she rolled her eyes before looking at the furiously blushing Hinata. "You know what forget it. Lets see what you're planning with all that damn sake."

"Right!" Naruto concentrated focusing his chakra. Biting his thumb, he performed a series of seals before slamming his hand to the ground, he then called out "KUCHIYOSE NO JUTSU!" With a soft almost explosion of smoke a large orange and blue toad appeared. With a dark blue vest the roughly three meter high as it crouched toad had a very large kunai and an intricately carved pipe tucked into its belt.

"Naruto! What's the occasion?" The large toad spoke and actually smiled.

"Gamakichi! It's my birthday! I have to talk to your pop but I figured I'd talk to you first and make sure he isn't in one of his bad moods."

"Oh he's fine, he'd get a kick out of being summoned for a birthday party instead of a fight I bet." Gamakichi said as he looked at the small gathering of people. "Although this looks a bit on the small and quiet side for a party."

"Cool!" Naruto built up a truly tremendous amount of chakra. Hinata, Shizune and the sake salesman were all stunned as his chakra became so intense it actually became visible in a rather large bubble of energy around him. Tsunade and Gamakichi though smiled. Again Naruto performed the summons jutsu. This time everyone nearly fell over from the force of the absolutely tremendous toad that appeared.

"Naruto." The giant toad said as it looked down and scowled at the young ninja. Gamabunta looked around and was somewhat surprised that there was no monster to fight. In fact he was very surprised that there wasn't even a fight of any sort going on.

"Hey Chief Toad!" Naruto called out. "Remember you said you couldn't make me your henchman until we sealed the deal with a drink?"

"Actually the way I remember it you begged off on that drink because you claimed to be too young but out of the kindness of my heart I officially accepted you anyway."

"Well I turned twenty today and I figured I owed you a drink!"

"Well, well, well, you are certainly a surprising one Naruto Uzumaki!" The chief toad said with a laugh. "It's a shame that those bottles you humans use are so small though."

"Actually sir I thought of that. I wasn't sure how much sake you drink normally so I got as much as I could." Naruto said with a large grin as he pulled out the sake scroll.

Unrolling the entire scroll he smeared a bit of his blood along the entire length of writing and focusing his chakra while performing a series of hand seals he released the sealed scroll. With a series of 'poofs' 15 barrels suddenly appeared amidst a fair amount of smoke.

"I only got two types, I hope you like them. I got three barrels of Nigori and the rest are honjōzō-shu"

"Honjōzō-shu did you say?" The chief toad licked his upper lip slightly. "By the looks of this, I think you are the best henchman I've ever had Naruto."

Narutos smile grew at the giant toads words. He popped the ring off the first barrel, pulled the lid off and took out a decent sized wooden box cup. Dipping the cup into the sake he raised the cup up in salute of the chief toad. Gamabunta carefully wrapped his front flipper around the barrel making it seem small, almost the size of one of the small porcelain cups that Tsunade herself favored.

"Ah, now that was some very good sake." Gamabunta sighed.

Naruto coughed and his eyes teared as he swallowed his. "If you say so." The orange clad ninja sputtered out, earning a laugh from the chief toad.

"Well now that we've made everything official we should share a bit of the next one with your friends." Gamabunta said. "I already know my own son of course along with Tsunade, Shizune and even Ton-Ton but who are these other two Naruto?"

Narutos head swam slightly, he had never had anything to drink before and his cup was a little on the large size. Slurring his words slightly he replied. "This guy here…you know I don't think I ever got your name sir, but anyways he's the guy I bought the sake from." Naruto hiccupped. "This lovely young woman here is my date for the day and my good friend Hinata."

"Your date eh?" The chief toad smiled. "What ever happened to that little pink haired girl?"

"Sakura? Ha! Like I would ever really go out with her." Naruto laughed. "I gave up on that psycho a long, long time ago. Don't get me wrong she's a great friend but the only reason I kept asking her out was because I knew she'd say no. Well of course there were all those times I thought I needed a good headache too, you can't beat Sakura when it comes to violent rejections. Besides she's way too tied up in her head over Sasuke, probably planning on rebuilding the Uchiha clan right now hahahaha."

"Really now?" The chief toad smiled. "So what about this Hinata here? She looks like she'd make a good girlfriend, she seems quite attracted to you and you're already on a date." Hinatas eyes nearly fell out of her head as they widened in shock and she felt the warmth of her brilliant glow-in-the-dark blush spread to her ears and down her chest.

"Hinata?" Naruto stumbled as the sake really kicked in. "Are you kidding? She's too good for someone like me. She's practically a princess here in Konoha. I'm lucky to even get her to go out with me on a date. She'd never really go for a guy like me, I don't have a family or much of anything else."

Naruto tripped and fell flat on his face at that.

Tsunade rolled her eyes as she stepped over the unconscious Naruto and opened the next barrel. Pulling out a few cups of her own she started to fill them from the barrel and handed one to the salesman and one to Shizune. After a moments hesitation she handed another filled cup to Hinata before filling one for herself.

"Go ahead, I know you're only 19 but after that I'm sure it'll be o.k."

Hinata numbly took the cup from Tsunade her eyes never leaving Naruto. "I-I can't believe that he thinks that I am too good for him." She said softly as tears started to form in her eyes.

"Give him a minute Hinata." Tsunade said as she drank her sake and Gamabunta took the open barrel. "He's new to drinking but he adapts quickly, just watch."

Naruto made a sudden great gasp of air before rolling over and bringing himself to his feet.

"Wow, I didn't expect that." He said as he looked around. "Did I miss something?"

"I don't know kiddo, what's the last thing you remember?" Tsunade asked with a smirk.

"I…I think I was introducing Hinata-chan to Gamabunta." Naruto frowned as he tried to clear the fog of the past few minutes.

"How's your head feel?" Tsunade asked still grinning.

"Hmm, oh, fine why wouldn't it?" He replied.

"Well other than planting your face in the ground, people often get headaches from drinking, it's called a hangover. You seem to be on fast forward for recovering though."

"Headache? Nope nothing like that." Naruto mused.

"Figures, you would be one of those lucky bastards who doesn't get hang overs." Tsunade scowled at him as she opened the third barrel. Pulling yet another cup from somewhere she filled it along with her own and handed the extra one to Naruto. "Here try this one, you should take it easy when you first start drinking. So drink it slowly."

There was an odd silence as Tsunade opened the fourth barrel but only filled the cups for herself, Shizune and the salesman, leaving Naruto and Hinata to continue nursing their cups from the previous barrel. Gamabunta let Gamakichi take a drink from the barrel before he took it and polished it off in one small swallow for him. Although still very young Gamakichi was considered old enough to drink for a toad. The next barrel was one of the Nigori which the chief toad claimed to be quite good and a nice change but he preferred the honjōzō-shu. The salesman begged off after that, still quite star struck to have been drinking with the chief toad. After a few more barrels Shizune claimed that she had paperwork to attend to and she to left. Although she did get a promise from Tsunade to make sure the Hokage kept a watchful eye on Naruto and Hinata.

"Thanks for summoning me for this one Naruto, you're the best. I should get going myself, if I have any more to drink I won't be able to find my way home." With a wave and a burst of smoke Gamakichi vanished.

It didn't take long for all fifteen barrels to become empty. Tsunade got a cup from each one except that first one that was for Naruto and Gamabunta alone. Naruto and Hinata managed to nurse another cup of honjōzō-shu and a single cup of Nigori throughout the rest of the barrels.

"Naruto Uzumaki, you are indeed full of surprises. You are a much better henchman than Jiraiya, in fact you may very well be as good as Yondaime Hokage. Thank you for a pleasant and enjoyable evening. Have a goodnight and happy birthday." With that the chief toad vanished in a cloud of smoke.

"Well I think you two are o.k. to find your own way home. I'm going to stay here for a little while." Tsunade said as she pulled out one of the bottles Naruto had given her and she headed off towards the memorial stone.

Although both Naruto and Hinata felt a little tipsy they were able to head back to the main part of the village hardly stumbling at all.

"So what would you like to do next?" Naruto asked Hinata as they walked along.  
"It's your birthday Naruto-kun, you should make that decision." She said softly.

"Well we could go for some more ramen." He smiled.

"Do you ever eat anything else?" She rolled her eyes but still smiled.

"Eat something else? Are you crazy, especially on my birthday? Not a chance." He replied with a laugh that showed he wasn't completely serious. Although he still headed towards Ichiraku.

"Well I'm sure that you'll come up with something." She smiled.

Sure enough he led them to Ichiraku where he finished off two more bowls. He took his time with these two though, well for Naruto anyway. He still finished both bowls in the time it took Hinata to finish one. Again he refused to let her chip in for the bill.

"How about we go see the fireworks together?" He asked quietly.

"That would be very nice Naruto-kun." She answered barely believing that she could even answer that question.

They worked their way through to the village's largest park. Naruto bought them a couple of dango sticks and they found a semi secluded spot away from the main crowd that was there to see the fireworks. As the sun set and the stars started to come out an occasional rocket was fired off to let people know that the show was getting closer. It didn't take long for the darkness to wrap itself around them and a short time later the fireworks show really got started.

Naruto glanced over to Hinata during one particularly spectacular display and slowly took her hand in his own.

"Naruto…" Hinata began.

"I'm sorry." He replied and he tried to take his hand away but she gripped tight and wouldn't let his hand go.

"Please don't. I like holding your hand." She paused as she turned to look into his brilliant blue eyes. "Naruto, I, I'm not a princess."

Naruto was gripped by a spasm of fear and some of what he said earlier suddenly cut through the fog. "I'm sorry Hinata, I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"Actually I'm very grateful." She realized that after all the years of waiting this was her best chance to talk to him about this. "Naruto-kun…I, I've always liked you. Ever since our days together at the academy."

Naruto was completely stunned at her confession. He could have been quite easily knocked over with a feather.

"You know what Hinata, I think I like you too. In fact I think I've liked you for a few years now. I'm a little dense with this kind of stuff." He laughed. "Who am I kidding, I'm more than a little dense."

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata began to cry as she wrapped her arms around him. "Thank you!"

"You know Hinata-chan, you've made this the best birthday I've ever had. I should be thanking you."

With that he leaned over, twisted a bit and softly kissed her on her lips. Her eyes snapped open wide in shock for a moment before they slowly closed. They slowly pulled apart from each other and stared into each others eyes as the fireworks continued to flash overhead.

"Hinata-chan, seriously, thank you. You really have made this the best birthday I've ever had in my life."

'_This was definitely the start of something really good.'_ Naruto thought with a smile.


	2. Chapter 2 business deal

A/N - As the others say Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. The only Naruto stuff I own at this time is the Manga books from 1 to 3 and then from 9 to 15 along with the first three uncut DVD box sets.

I originally thought this would be a one shot but I just couldn't leave a funny story with Naruto and the Chief Toad go without adding more to get Jiraiya involved. I'm going to leave the story listed as complete since as with the first chapter I feel it can easily end with the second chapter. Although, I do have the very beginnings of a couple of more ideas that would fit with this story. So who knows, hahaha.

Ch. 2 

Several weeks passed. Naruto had no real idea what was going on between himself and Hinata but was satisfied with the way things were going. Although they rarely saw each other since they were both very busy with missions, neither of them seemed to mind. They were able to hang out together at least once a week usually and enjoy a date together.

'I guess that would definitely mean we are dating.' He mused to himself as he thought about the few dates they had gone on so far. 'I wonder if that makes us boyfriend and girlfriend.'

He had tried a few times to talk to Hinata about this and that only succeeded in flustering the poor girl. He wished he had someone to talk to about this, the only one he felt he could really trust on this particular subject was Iruka and somehow he couldn't bring himself to ask. He actually had the day off and since his maybe/kinda/sorta girlfriend was out on a mission he had no real plans other than to wrestle with his thoughts about her for the day. He had tried to run through a light training session but thoughts of the girl with pale eyes kept intruding so he returned home to shower and change. He simply sat there on his bed chasing one thought after the other around in circles in his mind. Those thoughts were brought to an abrupt halt as someone began to pound furiously on his door. Shaking his head to help clear his thoughts he slowly got up off his bed, walked through the short hall where his bathroom was and into his kitchen area. The knocking got louder and louder and the door began to rattle ominously in its frame. Naruto suddenly began to feel a little uneasy from the pounding on his door so he picked up a couple of kunai from the small pile of his gear on the table. His eyes widened suddenly as he imagined that it could very well be Hinatas father on the other side, ready and willing to end the life of the now nervous blond shinobi.

"GOD DAMN IT NARUTO! GET YOUR SCRAWNY ASS OUT OF BED ALREADY AND OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!" A rather gravelly voice screamed out from the other side of the door.

Naruto was immediately confused as he began to realize the voice belonged to no other than his on and off master Jiraiya. He cautiously opened the door.

"Ero-sennin?" He asked with a confused look on his face as he looked out to see a very angry and red faced Jiraiya glaring at him.

"Don't pull that cute little 'ero-sennin' crap on me now. I am in no mood for it." Jiraiya huffed out, no longer screaming, much to Narutos relief.

"Uhh." Naruto blinked a few times, unsure exactly how to respond. "O.k., I guess. What's wrong?"

"WHAT'S WRONG!" Naruto flinched at the sudden increase in volume as Jiraiya's scream washed over him. "You tell me kid! Just what have you done now?"

"Nothing!" Naruto suddenly felt a surge of panic. He and Hinata had a few quick kisses during the past few weeks and visions of Hiashi tearing his arms off suddenly popped into his mind. "It was only a couple of kisses! Nothing to freak out over!"

This time Jiraiya blinked.

"A couple of kisses?" Jiraiya studied the young man intently, his eyes narrowing before letting out a great sigh and continuing. "You have no idea what I'm talking about do you?"

"Obviously not! What kind of lunatic are you anyway banging on my door like that and screaming your fool head off at me?"

"Don't you get uppity with me kiddo, I'll smack you upside the head and knock you into next week quicker than you can blink."

"Oh Yeah? You and what army? I oughtta kick your ass right here and now you old fool. Granny Tsunade would probably give me a medal or something for it!"

Jiraiya actually gritted his teeth and practically growled at the young man. Naruto smiled in a vicious snarl in return. His upper lip curled in such a way that his slightly oversize canine teeth became easier to see and he glared back even harsher at his old teacher.

"O.k. this isn't going to get us anywhere, just tell me what you did to Gamabunta." The white haired shinobi asked.

"Did to Gamabunta? You are kidding right?" Naruto was completely confused.

"No I am deadly serious." Jiraiya suddenly looked slightly embarrassed before he continued. "I, umm, well you see, I kind of got into a bit of a jam a couple of weeks ago and I wound up summoning Gamabunta. As soon as he saw me he started berating me. Calling me all sorts of vile names, mostly that I was a lousy henchman and a worthless good for nothing. He said at my best I wasn't half the henchman you were. He must have insulted me for an hour about how much of a lousy henchman I was and how you were so much better. The worst part about all of it was that I didn't use anywhere near enough chakra to summon him. It was like he was waiting for me to summon a toad, any toad. To top it all off that, the slimy bastard dumped me in the middle of some vast swamp in River country and left me there with virtually no chakra. It took me a week to pull myself out of that dank, dismal, muck filled hellhole and I'm sending the cleaning bill to you!" Jiraiya 'hmmphed' as he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Naruto.

Naruto stood there staring at Jiraiya completely stunned for a moment. That didn't last very long though and he started to snicker for another moment. As he looked up still snickering he saw Jiraiyas face flush with anger and he could no longer contain himself so he burst out laughing as visions of a muck covered Jiraiya crawling through a swamp danced in his head. He staggered back a few feet and nearly fell into a chair at the table. As he continued to laugh outrageously he proceed to bang his fist on the table. Tears started to stream down his cheeks as his body began to actually spasm with laughter.

"It's not funny damn it!" Jiraiya exclaimed shaking his fist at Naruto. "You just wait until you get the bills! Cleaning all the mud and bugs out of my hair alone took an entire day and they charged me triple what an all day spa would because of the damn creepy crawlies."

Several minutes passed before Naruto finally stopped laughing outrageously and after taking a few deep breaths he brought himself back under control with the exception of the occasional giggle.

"I guess it must have been the little get together we had for my birthday. Gamabunta and I shared some sake to 'seal the deal' of me being his henchman." Naruto finally answered.

"That's it?" Jiraiya looked at him incredulously, his eyes wide. "I did the same thing when I was first became one of his henchman. I even got an extra large 4 liter bottle of sake for the two of us."

Naruto snorted at that as he began to turn purple while he valiantly tried to contain another barrage of laughter.

"One" Naruto paused as a another snort of laughter escaped. "One 4 liter bottle?" He finally squeaked out before the laughter took him again.

"Just what is so damn funny you twisted little idiot?" Jiraiya demanded as his face grew red with anger once again.

Naruto couldn't stop laughing for nearly five minutes as Jiraiya fumed. Finally slowing and getting his breathing back under control the blond young man continued.

"Well, you see I was a little concerned about how much sake Gamabunta could drink so I started buying it about six months or so before my 20th birthday."

"Just how did you manage to pull that off?" Jiraiya asked coldly, eyes narrow.

"Oh that was easy, I just annoyed Tsunade until she said it was o.k. The only real condition was that she had to hold onto the sake until my birthday. Actually she was one of the people who joined us."

"You actually trusted Tsunade with holding sake for you? I always knew you were something of an idiot but that's really going a bit far."

"Nah, nothing to worry about, every time I bought another batch of sake I bought a bottle just for her, something like a storage fee you could say. The sake I bought for Gamabunta was sealed in a scroll. I'd simply drag Granny Tsunade off to the brewery every few missions when I could afford it and buy more."

Jiraiya suddenly felt an unsettling chill. He knew that Naruto tended to over do things, especially when he wasn't sure how something was supposed to work."

"Kid, just how much sake did you buy anyway?" Jiraiya asked with a trace of worry.

"Well lets see, I was getting a bulk discount that was apparently a bit better than wholesale since I was buying such large quantities. I also think the guy running the brewery took a liking to me. Even though he runs the largest brewery in Konoha I guess it's a little unusual when someone drags the Hokage into a business to buy stuff. Plus he was at the gathering too and he was quite impressed with Gamabunta."

"DAMN IT NARUTO, JUST HOW MUCH SAKE DID YOU BUY ALREADY?" Jiraiya yelled out as the last of his small amount of patience vanished.

"Well…" Naruto smiled as he paused for a moment and changed the facts ever so slightly. "Don't forget they were doing me a favor, so to cut costs we were using the barrels the rice came in."

"B-b-barrels?" Jiraiya stammered as his concern came flooding back.

"Yeah, it was about 200 liters per barrel or there about." Naruto said with a wide grin at the sight of Jiraiya's widening eyes.

"Just how many of these 200 liter barrels did you wind up buying anyway?" Jiraiya suddenly felt somewhat sick to his stomach.

"I think it was 15." Naruto scrunched up his eyes and thought hard. "Yeah it was 15 barrels. Mostly honjōzō-shu but three of them were nigori." Naruto smiled as Jiraiya's mouth dropped open.

Several minutes passed and Naruto actually grew almost (but not really) concerned about Jiraiya. Just as he was thinking about finding a magic marker to start drawing on the older mans face Jiraiya snapped back into the conscious world, preventing what would have likely been one of Narutos more entertaining pranks.

"So you are telling me that not only did you buy about 3,000 liters of sake for that damnable toad but you also bought **good** sake as well?"

"That sounds about right." Naruto beamed as Jiraiyas stomach sank.

"Damn kid you even out did the Yondaime. He only managed to come up with 1,000 liters."

This time it was Narutos turn to have his mouth fall open.

"B-b-but Gamabunta said I might be as good a henchman as the Yondaime. If I got three times the sake the Fourth did, he should have told me I was better." Naruto was confused.

"Maybe but the Yondaime did things properly by doing the drinking before officially becoming a henchman to the Chief Toad and don't forget, you can be pretty damn annoying. I think you're the only one foolish enough to have summoned the Chief Toad into salt water." Jiraiya finally smiled at Narutos embarrassment. "Besides that slimy monster probably didn't want you to get a swelled head."

"I guess I'll simply chalk it up to being one of the ways I'm surpassing the previous Hokages then." Naruto suddenly smiled greatly.

"Now that's funny kid." Jiraiya finally laughed himself for a brief moment before he realized just how pathetic his 4 liter bottle was all those years ago. "Shit. That damn toad is going to give me grief over this for years."

"I'll tell you what old man, since I'm now of legal age, I'll buy you a bottle." Naruto beamed.

Jiraiya mumbled something but wasn't one to turn down free sake so he nodded to Naruto. Naruto led him to the brewery and they were both greeted warmly by the salesman. Although Naruto was beginning to suspect that the man was actually the owner.

"Lord Jiraiya!" The man exclaimed giving Naruto a big smile.

Naruto was surprised, he still fully intended to become Hokage and earn the respect and recognition of everyone in the village. That surprise always happened whenever he got recognition from someone without that grand title he so desperately wanted.

"Hey old man I'm going to need a bottle for the Toad Sage here." Naruto hid his mouth and whispered to the man. "He's been having a rough time better make your strongest honjōzō-shu"

"You got it Naruto." The turned and called out an order to the back room. "I'm glad you're here Naruto, I've got a business idea I'd like to talk to you about."

Naruto looked confused and Jiraiya suddenly looked slyly interested.

"Business idea?" The blond young man asked.

"Yeah check this out." The man rummaged around under the counter and brought up a few empty bottles.

Each bottle had a label with a picture of Gamabunta on it with different sayings. Naruto read them all and they all said stuff along the lines of Konohas best honjōzō-shu, Gamabunta approved. Naruto laughed at one that had really small cartoon pictures of himself and Tsunade on one bottle with Gamabunta towering over them. That one was a good trick considering the size of the label he thought.

"I don't know." Naruto said quietly as he thought. "They look really good but I think we'd have to get the Chief Toads approval for something like this, I guess I should summon him." Naruto headed outside.

"Of course! Of course!" The brewer was all smiles as he followed Naruto.

Jiraiya started to twitch ever so slightly as he also headed outside. Not enough for the brewer to notice but Naruto was all too familiar with the Toad Sage's sudden but subtle change. Naruto quickly grabbed his wallet and gave a mental sigh of relief that it was still there. There were many things in life that he was still pretty clueless about but he had some especially harsh lessons regarding money due to Jiraiya over the years. If the perverted old man hadn't fleeced Narutos wallet the blond young man was certain something else must be up that would somehow involve Jiraiya diverting some money to his own clutches. Naruto began to get irritated with the toad sage, the old freak had more than enough money from all those dirty books. Not knowing what was up though he simply kept a sharp eye on the white haired sage.

Luckily the brewery was at the edge of the village near one of the training ground preferred by many of the senior shinobi of the leaf. Whether or not that preference was because of the location of the brewery was often speculated by many of the younger shinobi. Naruto didn't care he only wanted enough space for the Chief Toad so nothing would be damaged by his appearance. Naruto suddenly noticed that Jiraiyas demeanor had shifted slightly and now he actually was starting to look rather nervous. Naruto smiled, judging by the story he got earlier things just might get interesting once the Chief Toad sees Jiraiya.

It took only a moment for Naruto to summon the massive amount of chakra needed and go through the motions. With the characteristic smoke and noise of a summons the Chief Toad appeared, calmly smoking his pipe. The massive toad immediately scowled at the sight of Jiraiya but his expression softened somewhat at the sight of Naruto.

"So Naruto, two summons in a row and nothing for me to fight?" The giant toads voice echoed throughout the surrounding countryside. "Unless you'd like me to squish Jiraiya here." The chief toad laughed while Jiraiya paled.

"Tempting Boss, very tempting but I don't think I'm allowed to do the old pervert any real harm unless Granny Tsunade is around to witness or help. Actually the sake brewer has a business proposal for you."

"Really, now that's interesting." The Chief Toad looked down thoughtfully.

"Ah yes, Mr. Chief Toad Sir." The brewer stepped forward and bowed deeply. "We would like to use your name and likeness on a couple of our lines of sake."

"Hmmm, and what would you be offering me in return?"

"Well sir, since you enjoyed our sake so much I figured a percentage of each batch could be delivered to you somehow."

"That sounds reasonable and fair." The Chief Toad thought for a moment. "How much sake do you brew up for each batch?"

"Generally about ten thousand liters Sir."

"Ten thousand eh? Tell you what I'll take two of those barrels we had at Narutos birthday from each batch for myself. We'll have Naruto be my agent in Konoha for an additional one percent cut of the profit from each batch and he will handle the delivery to me."

"That sounds more than fair Mr. Chief Toad Sir." The brewer positively beamed.

"I trust that any of your sake that is labeled with my likeness will be of the same excellent quality as the examples we enjoyed during Narutos birthday."

"Of course Mr. Chief Toad Sir! We have our own reputation to worry about as well you know."

"Of course." The massive toad smiled for a moment before glancing to the nervous Jiraiya. "You there, perverted worm! Write us up a contract for this deal and don't even think about adding yourself to the deal somehow. Make three copies while you're at it!"

Naruto smiled, he had just known that somehow money would be involved and he got a kick out of the fact that Jiraiya wasn't getting any of it. Then it hit him. He was going to be getting a cut of every bottle of sake sold that had the Chief Toads likeness on it.

"Um, just how long will you continue to use the Chief Toads likeness?" Naruto asked the brewer as Jiraiya quickly wrote out the contract onto some blank scrolls.

"For as long as people buy it Uzumaki-san, for as long as people buy it." The man positively beamed.

Once Jiraiya finished the contracts Gamabunta had the brewer and Naruto sign their names in their own blood before he had Naruto nick the tip of one of the toad massive digits in one of his front flippers and add a drop of his own toad blood to each contract. Naruto thought that was a little over the top for a mere business contract but he certainly wasn't going to question the Chief Toad, especially when he was making out very well on the deal for doing very little. Naruto, the brewer and the Chief Toad each kept a copy of the scroll and all three scrolls disappeared from sight in short order.

Hearing something of a murmur behind him Naruto turned to look back towards the village. He was stunned that a small crowd had gathered and was watching the small gathering with the Chief Toad. Granted they kept a respective distance but it was rare that anyone in the village got a chance to see the Chief Toad and the fact that there wasn't a major battle going on was a very big plus in every ones book. The growing crowd was also noticed by Gamabunta as well and the large amphibian smiled at this golden opportunity.

"Thank you for summoning me for this Naruto!" The Chief Toads voice boomed out a bit louder than it should have been. "You may very well be a better henchman than the Yondaime Hokage. Don't you go slinking off there Jiraiya you pervert, you could learn a thing or two from Naruto here."

With that the Chief Toad leaped high into the air before vanishing in a very large puff of smoke. Naruto scratched the back of his head as he tried to puzzle out the giant toads odd behavior just now and his dramatic exit. As he turned to walk back to the brewery with the jubilant brewer and the subdued Jiraiya he over heard some of villagers from the crowd.

'…better than the Yondaime…'

'…could teach Lord Jiraiya…'

'…was that really _Naruto_ Uzumaki?…'

'…_Naruto_ summoned the Chief Toad…'

Naruto blinked, a lot, as he began to realize some of the implications those words coming from all those people meant. He began to smile as he re-entered the brewery sales office. He would definitely have to thank Gamabunta for this later.

"…all that sake and money, just slipped through my fingers." Jiraiya whispered to himself as Naruto walked past the tearful toad sage.

One of the brewers workers was waiting for them with that bottle of honjōzō-shu that Naruto had asked for earlier. Naruto reached for his wallet but the brewer waved him off.

"It's on the house Naruto." The brewer smiled at the sight of the crestfallen Jiraiya.

Naruto chuckled as he picked up the bottle and walked over to hand it to Jiraiya. Before he could actually hand the bottle over though the door suddenly burst open and a very agitated Sakura confronted him.

"Naruto! What's going on? We heard the Chief Toad say something about squishing Jiraiya all the way to the Hokage's tower so she sent me over here immediately to find out what was going on." The pink haired kunoichi looked like she was angry with Naruto, causing him to flinch.

"It was just a business deal Sakura, nothing to get excited about." Naruto sighed as he pulled out his wallet. "You'd better get me another bottle of that honjōzō-shu."

In short order Naruto was heading back to the Hokage tower along with Sakura. He actually had two bottles with him. The full bottle of honjōzō-shu that he felt would be a good thing to have for facing Tsunade, which he insisted on paying for. Although he knew she wouldn't be angry with any of this, he thought buying that bottle for her was a very inexpensive form of insurance. In fact the more Naruto thought about things he felt that she was going to greatly enjoy this whole story, especially the part about Jiraiya being dumped in a swamp. The other bottle was actually empty, it was one of the 'Gamabunta approved' sample bottles. The brewer told him that the one with the likeness of him and Tsunade wasn't going to be used so he gave that one to Naruto. His thoughts turned to Hinata and he smiled softly, she would certainly enjoy hearing this story.

Sakura frowned as they walked. She wasn't sure what was going on lately but something was definitely up. Naruto hadn't even hinted at asking her out in weeks and weeks. Now he was making business deals with the largest brewer in Konoha that involved the Chief Toad. Even Jiraiya was acting strange. She had been relieved when the freaky old pervert had slinked off practically whimpering something about lost money but the fact that he didn't even come close to drooling over her was oddly unsettling. Sure she didn't have the 'assets' of Tsunade but she had been the only woman in the room and Jiraiya didn't even glance at her. That had never happened before. She suddenly stumbled and had to resist the urge to smack herself in the head, her forehead was big enough and it certainly didn't need any swelling from smacking herself she thought as she realized she had completely forgotten Narutos birthday weeks ago. Maybe that was it she thought. Although all the other times she had forgotten his birthday it didn't take long for him to annoy her about it and try to use her forgetting in an attempt to wheedle a date from her. Three days was his record and this year several weeks has passed. As they walked down the street together Sakura was even more unsettled at the obvious happiness practically leaking out of Naruto. She was definitely going to have to look deeper into this.

For once in his life Naruto barely noticed that Sakura was walking next to him. He was still somewhat stunned by the little bits and pieces of conversations he had over heard a short time ago. He was actually doing it. He was earning respect and acknowledgement from the villagers and he wasn't even Hokage yet. The feeling of satisfaction was even better than he thought it was. He was even looking forward to meeting with Tsunade. This whole sake idea was looking more and more like the best thing he had ever thought up. The list of good things happening to him because he went a little overboard fulfilling an old obligation just kept getting longer and longer. His thoughts bounced around, often turning back to a certain pale-eyed girl with dark hair but he had plenty of other stuff on his mind as well. He patted the scroll tucked into an inside pocket of his jacket.

'_Life just keeps getting better and better.'_ He thought as he walked.


	3. Chapter 3 real estate

A/N - As the others say Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto. The only Naruto stuff I own at this time is most of the Manga books (from 1 to 32) and the first four uncut DVD box sets. My apologies for the extra long delay on this one.

Ch. 3

About two and a half months later.

It was rather late and the streets of Konoha were becoming quiet. In the back of an even quieter café a young couple were having something of an argument. It was actually their first.

"Naruto…" Hinata said with a warning tone to her voice, cutting off his latest protest.

"O.K. o.k. you're right I really should know more about money and stuff." He glanced at the small book she had given him as a holiday present. He hated studying from books.

"Not just for yourself, if you truly wish to become Hokage you should be familiar with all sorts of finance matters. Now that you actually have more than one income stream you have the perfect opportunity to gain some very valuable experience." She smiled to herself. It really wasn't fair for her to play the 'Hokage' card against him but she knew that it would work.

"Hmmm." He looked thoughtful as he reached out and picked up the book. 'The Richest Man in…' He looked back to her before he even finished reading the title. He knew she was right so he pocketed the book."

"Don't forget about that." She said, continuing that warning tone.

"I won't, I promise!" He exclaimed and she smiled.

A month after that get together - roughly near the end of January.

Although Naruto had only seen Hinata a few times, he had been in an exceptionally good mood these past three months. He thought back to that one especially nice quiet evening they were able to get together to exchange holiday presents. Although it was now a bit over a month later and the times he thought about how rarely they saw each other made him just a little annoyed. Even that didn't really effect his overall positive mood. They had to schedule that one night together nearly a week before the end of December because of their schedules. She had sternly told him that he was not to spend too much money on buying her stuff. He of course broke the ryo limit she had set but not by enough to really anger her. Although completely impractical for a shinobi he had bought her a simple matched set of diamond studded silver heart shaped earrings with a matching heart pendant necklace. One glance at the diamonds in the jewelry told her that he had easily broken the money limit they had set but she knew arguing with him about it would be pointless. He had also gotten her a batch of flowers that had a few bright red roses mixed in with the rest. In addition to the book, she had gotten him a more practical gift of three kunai along with a silver framed picture of the two of them together along with cooking dinner for him at his apartment. Naruto felt as though he had the better end of things once he had tasted the ramen she had made for him. Although she had made the ramen as a side dish. Dinner itself was mostly pork kushiyaki but she also made some takoyaki that he thoroughly enjoyed. She had blushed furiously at his reaction to the entire meal. They had argued, with each smiling, after dinner when he forced her to sit at the table while he cleaned up and did the dishes. He won the argument with a fierce hug and a soft kiss on her forehead. He had been tempted to create a few clones but decided he liked teasing her verbally as he washed the dishes and she sat at the table but as long as she was there he preferred to do the cleaning himself for some reason.

He sighed as sat in his kitchen finishing off some instant ramen as he thought back to that night. That had been almost the last time they had been able to even see each other for more than a few minutes. They had even missed her birthday. Still he smiled, it was an enjoyable three months despite the rarity of the time they spent together.

She was currently out on a border patrol mission and not expected back for a few more days. The Gamabunta line of sake had been a phenomenal success and Naruto was literally raking in tremendous amounts of cash. In fact they were taking in orders from towns and villages all across the Fire Country. On Hinata's suggestion during one of their unfortunately rare dates Naruto had gone to the bank he did business with and opened a second account to deposit all of the money coming in from the 'Gamabunta' sake sales. As he had promised, he had read the book she had given him and quickly realized that it was merely an introduction to how money worked. It didn't take long for that realization to grow, fed by her words about a Hokage needing to know 'money'. Feeling like something of a business tycoon he then purchased a book on basic accounting and a business ledger. It was really dry stuff but the actual accounting was pretty easy since he only entered deposits in his business ledger. Something gave him such a deep feeling of satisfaction that every time he looked at the black binder sitting on its own shelf in his kitchenette and he smiled. For the first time in his life he was actually going out of his way to study something using pretty much nothing but books and scrolls. Even stranger when he thought about it, the subject matter had apparently nothing to do with being a shinobi.

It had quickly become rather routine. He would swing by the brewery every few days, summon Gamakichi to take the Chief Toads cut of sake back to the toads giant father and then Naruto would happily accept the voucher that was his cut of the deal. After that Naruto would simply make a stop at the bank and deposit the voucher. He'd pocket the receipt from the bank and once home, with a smile he would make an entry in his black binder. The brewer was always smiling anytime he saw Naruto now. In fact he would often give Naruto a bottle of sake as well, the man was in such good spirits. Not being much of a drinker Naruto found that the full bottles of sake were starting to accumulate and needed their own shelving setup in his bedroom. Naruto also noticed that the people at the bank were starting to smile more at him when he made his appearances. That was something he found rather odd, they had been rather grudging in accepting his business many years ago and probably wouldn't have even allowed him to open an account if it weren't for Kakashi and old man Sarutobi. They had pretty much been the only bank to even let him in the door and until recently they had never warmed up to him. Naruto actually found the whole thing amusing, it was funny how much something as impersonal as a fat bank account could change some peoples opinions.

He was returning from one of his 'sake runs' with a deposit receipt and bottle. He had almost reached his apartment when he ran into his landlord. Things had been a little tense between them a couple of years ago after Narutos 18th birthday passed and his monthly stipend from being a 'ward of the village' had ended. He had been a little late with the rent payments a few times, even though he had plenty of money from his missions. He just had a little trouble making the adjustment for a few months. The man had never taken too kindly to Naruto before that and those few months had not helped the tension between the two. The past few months though, things had certainly changed. Even though he never touched the money from the sake deal, not only had it made him feel at ease financially but he had learned how to better budget his shinobi income. Lately he had even started going out of his way and paying his rent a few days early over the past three months. Naruto also got into the habit of handing off one of the bottles of sake from his 'collection' every time he ran into his landlord. Those two factors had changed his relationship with his landlord greatly, now the man smiled every time he saw Naruto. This time though he had a frown on before he even saw Naruto. He didn't even see the young man walk up at first, he was simply looking at the building Naruto lived in while frowning at the shabby roofing and the fading paint.

"Hey Tendon-san what's up?" Naruto beamed.

"Ah, Naruto, looks like you'll be getting a new landlord soon."

"What?" Naruto exclaimed as he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Well looks like I've got to sell this place. I had a side business deal fall through and I need some cash fast. This building ought to bring me enough money, if I can sell it fast enough and it's always had a negative cash flow."

A little light bulb went off in Narutos head. He knew what cash flow was now and he had picked up that although negative cash flow in real estate was bad it could also be an opportunity.

"How much are you asking for it anyway?" Naruto asked, trying to hide his sudden intense interest.

The man named a figure and Narutos heart sank, it was easily three times the amount of money he had in his 'Gamabunta sake account'. On a whim, he had been having a lot of luck lately after all, he figured it wouldn't hurt to offer one third his land lords asking price.

"Well since you're losing money anyway, I'll give you a third of what you're asking in cash."

The man laughed.

"Now that's funny Naruto. For that much I'd just try to keep it. Besides if you had that much cash you could easily get a mortgage to cover the rest."

"Mortgage?" Despite his recent increase in financial knowledge that was a word he had completely forgotten about for that instant. He had been spending a lot of his evenings reading finance books and even several books on real estate. Again Hinata had gotten him started, simply by stating that a Hokage should know about real estate matters as well as be good with money. The more he thought about it the more he realized he might actually be able to buy the place he had been living in most of his life.

"Yeah a mortgage, you know from a bank." The older man laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, I just forgot for a second. Tell you what, if you give me a look at your books for this building I just might take it off your hands." Naruto smiled as he handed the man the bottle he got not a half hour ago.

His landlord grew quickly quiet and studied Naruto for a few moments while accepting the bottle. With a shrug he figured it couldn't hurt to let Naruto see the books and if the young man really had one third of his asking price in cash he would probably get a mortgage with ease. The older man smiled, he might actually be able to get the cash he needed today if his new suspicions were correct. They walked down the street together to another building the man owned. This other building was much newer and not only had the landlords office but his home as well and a few businesses renting shops on the ground floor. Naruto knew that most of the building he lived in was empty. In fact he was the only resident that actually lived there. The only other people in the building were because of two small businesses that took up less than a third of the ground floor. Naruto used a side door on the opposite side of the building to get to his fourth floor apartment so he usually never even saw the other people. As far as he knew the other two floors of the building were empty.

Naruto spent a few minutes looking over his landlords accounting book for the building. His landlord still had a small mortgage on it. That along with the taxes and maintenance costs were what was causing the building to have a negative cash flow. Naruto thought for a few moments. He would have a larger mortgage if he bought it the way he wanted to and therefore his cash flow would be a worse negative than what it was for his landlord. That was also assuming that he would continue paying rent to himself.

"So why haven't you set up more shops? The building certainly has enough unused space." Naruto asked.

"Mostly money reasons. I always meant to but I never had enough extra cash to clean out and renovate the place. I figured once I paid off the mortgage on it I'd be able to do just that but now I'm in something of a crisis and I really need the cash." The man answered in a tired voice.

"Well if I remember right, you use the same bank that I do, right?"

"I think you're right."

"Lets head over there and see what they say." Naruto said with a smile.

Naruto and the man retraced his earlier steps back to their bank. By chance they ran into Sakura along the way. Naruto almost didn't see her much to her surprise. She was even further surprised when Naruto simply waved to her and continued along with the older man he was with without even saying hi.

She had fully expected him to practically attack her. She couldn't quite figure out what was going on with him lately. Since they were all Jounin these days, out of all of their friends she was the only one who was constantly in the village with her duties at the hospital. Tsunade was making it no secret that she was grooming Naruto for the Hokage position and usually assigned him missions close to or within the village whenever she could. So Sakura was accustomed to seeing Naruto more than any of the others. This past Holiday season though was the first time in years that he hadn't hunted her down to give her a gift. Even odder was that he had asked Ino to drop off his gift to her. There was something unnerving with the way Ino smiled at her when her blond friend handed her Narutos gift. Even stranger this was the first year his gift somehow lacked his usual personal touch. It was a nice print of blooming cherry blossom trees but it seemed commercial in an odd way. She kept meaning to talk to him but things always popped up that always seemed to take up her time. In fact as she thought about it, she didn't think that Naruto had said as much as a full sentence to her since the day she saw him at the sake brewery and that was like months and months ago.

She didn't like to think about that day. To have a known pervert of such magnitude as Jiraiya completely ignore her that day still unnerved her, it was like that perverted freak didn't see her as a woman that day. Now she was starting to wonder if Naruto didn't see her as a woman. Her next thought was that maybe all of her rejections over the years had 'broken him', she had often hit him pretty hard even she sometimes admitted, well only to herself anyway. Maybe she had caused him to 'jump the fence'.

'_More like tossed him over or more likely through the fence.'_ Her inner self grumbled.

Maybe he was looking to boys now. For a brief moment she started to smile slightly and to think perverse thoughts. Despite the rarity of those thoughts, to this day she still blamed Konohamaru for them. She shook her head rather violently, giving herself a slight headache.

"He would never." She said softly.

She suddenly remembered that smug smile of Ino's when her blond friend gave her the Holiday present from Naruto. Maybe something was going on between Ino and Naruto she wondered.

Sakura was taken aback by all these thoughts and actually stood in the street for a few moments before she decided that she had to know more about what Naruto was up to. Quickly turning around she followed them both, shortly winding up at one of Konoha's many banks. Sakura smoothly positioned herself in some shadows under a scaffolding setup across from the bank. She was able to easily see the entire interior of the bank and she was confused by how much all of the young woman working in the bank smiled at Naruto. To her it was obvious that they were all trying to get his attention.

"Hussies." She muttered as she stood in the shadows.

Of course Naruto was obviously clueless that he was getting such attention but Sakura knew they were all focused intently on her former team mate. To her even greater puzzlement she next saw through the window that the bank manager greeted Naruto with a very large smile. Something really weird was going on. She had to admit that Naruto had gotten physically much more attractive as he had gotten older but she still thought of him as annoying at best. To see one of the older citizens of Konoha smile at him like that was a little unnerving.

'_Something really weird is going on.'_ She thought.

Naruto was pleased that his banker had no problems setting up a mortgage for him. Even better, since Naruto had been such a good customer lately and was putting up 25% of the asking price as a down payment, they gave him an interest rate that was a half point lower than the going rate. He had decided that even though he had a bit over a third of the asking price it would be a good idea to keep some cash in the account, even though it would likely replenish soon.

They left the bank intent on heading to the office of his soon to be former landlords lawyer. As they exited, the confused Sakura jumped back. She didn't want Naruto to think she was following him around the village. Unfortunately she was so unsettled by her thoughts that she hadn't fully paid attention to the scaffolding and she bumped into one of the supports. She grabbed one of the pipes as she stumbled and in an extremely uncharacteristic loss of control of her inhuman strength, she crushed and twisted the support pipe in her hand. She looked up as she heard some of the scaffolding begin to collapse above her. Luckily her reflexes gave her plenty of time to jump out of the way as a bag of cement and a pile of bricks crashed into the ground right where she had just been standing. Although the falling debris completely missed her the bag of cement ruptured as it hit the ground and a fine gray powder seemed to explode as it flew out of the bag. Sakura was completely enveloped in the resulting gray cloud. A crowd quickly gathered around her and she soon heard Narutos loud voice.

"Sakura! Are you o.k.?" The young man asked intently.

She frowned as she looked over herself. From what she could see she was completely covered by the powder. The strands of her hair that she could see had taken on a rather disconcerting gray color.

"Um, yeah I think so." She muttered, as she pulled at the sleeve of her shirt.

"Maybe you should head home and get cleaned up." Naruto said.

"Oh, do you really think so?" Sakura said with a growl and a tone dripping sarcasm.

"Hey, do what ever you want. I've got things to do and I should go!" Naruto threw his hands up as he backed up a few paces.

He quickly glanced to his landlord and figured it was time to beat a hasty retreat. He had no idea exactly what had happened or why Sakura was even there. He was pretty sure she had been going in a different direction when he saw her before he got to the bank. One thing he had learned over the years though was that Sakura was quick to blame him for anything that happened whenever he was around. As they walked off Naruto was tempted to pull on his landlords sleeve and run before Sakura decided to really blame him for whatever had happened to her and hit him.

"Your friend there seems a little strange." Tendon said after they rounded the corner.

"Yeah, I'm starting to think she's getting stranger lately." Naruto answered as he cast a nervous glance back.

Sakura continued muttering to herself as she walked off and her irritation grew. She was pretty close to home and decided to head there and wash up. She sighed in relief upon discovering that her parents weren't home and she went straight to the washing machine. Stripping down to her underwear she tossed the rest of her clothes into the machine and started a cycle.

'_It's probably a good idea to rinse everything first, then run it a second time with detergent.'_ She thought to herself.

She frowned at the sight of her now gray boots that she had left next to the machine. A strand of hair fell in front of her face and she actually growled at the sight of the gray strands. She glanced at the machine that had just finished filling itself and she figured she had just enough time for a quick shower before the next water cycle started. In a few moments she was standing in a stream of nice hot water. The cement turned into a nasty mud like substance. The gooey cement was coming off easily enough even if she needed to do a bit more scrubbing to get the gray color itself off of her skin. She felt her hair get heavy and sighed once again. Reaching out of the shower she grabbed a comb and began to focus on getting all the gray junk out of her hair. She began to relax as the stuff came out. Despite it being soaking wet her hair began to return to its natural pink color, after a second round of shampoo anyway. The whole ordeal was taking a bit longer than she had thought it would and she lost track of time. She figured her hair was a little more than half finished when the water pressure dropped a bit and all of the hot water vanished.

Sakura yelled out as the stream of water turned into what seemed to be icy cold. She jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and ran through the house to the washing machine.

"Stupid machine." She said as she pulled the dial to stop the wash cycle, unfortunately the dial popped off in her hand.

She hadn't looked earlier and it had been set to 'hot' for the 2nd water cycle. She glowered at the machine for a moment as she stood there holding the dial in one hand and the towel in the other.

"Sakura!" The young kunoichi spun around at the sound of her mothers voice.

Everything seemed to come to a screeching halt as Sakura stood there stark naked except for the towel hanging from her hand, facing both of her parents. Her father was the first to actually react as his mouth fell open, his face turned a brilliant red. He dropped the two bags of groceries he was holding as he spun around and nearly ran out of the room. Sakura herself turned beet red and she crushed the washing machine dial in her hand before dropping its remains on the floor as she fumbled with the towel.

"Perhaps you should return to your shower." Sakura's mother said in a very even voice as she glared at her daughter.

---ooo---

In a surprisingly short amount of time Naruto and his now former landlord left the lawyers office. Although not completely official until the paperwork made its way through the village bureaucracy, Naruto was now the proud owner of an entire building. The two of them headed back to Tendons office where the older man handed over several files related to the building along with the binder that was the 'books' for the building and a large ring of keys. In a flash Naruto said goodbye and ran off to 'his' building. He figured he should introduce himself to his tenants and he was itching to see the rest of the place.

The conversations didn't last long. Both business owners were surprised at the fact that the building had been sold. They were a bit apprehensive at first but Naruto assured them that he was certainly going to honor their existing leases and not play any games to increase their rent. Although he told them that he planned to quickly fill up the rest of the ground floor at least.

He quickly checked the other 'shops' on the ground floor and sighed. The building was set up for three more store fronts on the ground level. There were two on one end that matched the two that were occupied, again they took up a little less than a third of the ground floor. The remaining third of the space was one store front that was about double the size of the other single spaces on their own. Several windows from each shop were boarded up and were pretty much destroyed once Naruto got a look on the inside. All five spaces also had access to the space beneath each of them in the basement that he had never suspected to exist. The subdivided basement effectively made each rental space actually twice as large as it appeared to be from the outside.

Naruto figured that he needed to rent out either the one large space or both smaller spaces if he wanted to at least break even on the buildings cash flow. That negative cash flow was certainly part of what made the building an opportunity but he had to quickly make it positive before it became a glaring liability. He could likely support the mortgage for a long time if he worked a little harder and took on more higher ranked missions. If the sake sales continued the way they were going lately he'd have the whole place completely paid off in less than a year. Although he knew that you could make a lot of money using leverage in real estate he just felt that really was a horrible way to run a successful business over the long term. As far as real estate went though he really wanted to have this place paid off completely as soon as possible, it would be even better than 'money in the bank' in many ways if it was paid off. While contrarian to many real estate theories he also knew he would feel much more comfortable if it was paid off and he was sure it should really support itself as soon as possible when it came to cash flow.

He sighed in resignation as he assessed the amount of junk the building contained on the unoccupied ground floor. It was no wonder Tendon never got around to cleaning the place up. It'd take a small army just to get rid of all the junk. None of it looked at all worthwhile at first glance.

Naruto smiled, small armies were after all something of a specialty of his.

He stepped back out into the street, brought his hands up and concentrated a large amount of chakra. In a surprisingly short amount of time the whole area was filled with shadow clones of Naruto. They were all smiling and they were all being unusually quiet. Naruto himself suddenly called out.

"You all know what to do! Lets go!" They all seemed to blur together into some strange black and orange mass that almost seemed to crash into the building. In moments dozens of clones started flowing back out. They were all carrying arm loads of junk. Larger items soon started coming out the door to be quickly hauled off as well, by two or more clones. It was a strange sight indeed, even for this area of Konoha. The people who lived and worked here had gotten somewhat accustomed to odd occurrences with Naruto living here but this 'river' of junk hauling Narutos easily took the cake for the strangest in recent times. In short order the large number of junk hauling Narutos were gone, heading off to the village dump and recycling center. They may have disappeared quickly but the people who had witnessed the spectacle talked about it for quite a while afterwards.

There were still dozens left at Narutos building though. All of the boarded up windows had the boards pulled off and the remains of glass removed. Clouds of dust and dirt began flying out the doors and empty windows. Being a 'wind master' was certainly coming in handy for this job Naruto thought as he smiled as the clouds of dust began to fade.

In just a few hours all three shops were actually sparkling. Each store still had at least a dozen Narutos painting all of the walls and ceilings white. While a crew of workers from one of the village contractors were replacing the glass where needed. Naruto stood out in the street again and smiled. Despite the really rough looking paint job the place had never looked this good as far as he could remember. While the roof most certainly needed work he figured that could easily wait, it didn't leak after all. He gave his paint job a closer and more critical look and frowned for a moment. With a sigh he decided to call it a day and with a small smile he headed off to Ichiraku for dinner. He had an idea that would fix the paint job and the more he thought about it the more he smiled.

---ooo---

The next morning Sakura stood before Tsunade and briefly described the two instances where she had lost control of her own inhuman strength. She colored in embarrassment as she told Tsunade that she had basically flashed her own father. She then told her mentor that she had found out a few hours after that horrifying incident that her stopping the load of wash had only served to activate the cement in her clothes. So now not only had she lost one of her favorite outfits but she had inadvertently destroyed her parents washing machine. Tsunade looked at the young woman sternly before she decided to say anything. Unfortunately Naruto decided to barge into Tsunade's office at the same time the Hokage began speaking.

"Are you pregnant?" Tsunade asked and then sighed as she saw the wide eyed look on Narutos face as he slid to a stop in front of her desk, while Sakura turned bright red and began sputtering.

"What?" Naruto yelled out as he came screeching to a halt and his mouth dropped open.

"Naruto! This is exactly why I've told you time and time again not to simply barge into my office!" Tsunade yelled at Naruto.

Naruto's gaze shifted rapidly between the once again embarrassed Sakura and the irritated Tsunade several times. He blinked a few times, shook his head and then closed his mouth. Giving one last surprised look to Sakura he turned to Tsunade.

"Hey, it's going to be my office one day and I should have a good idea of whatever official Hokage stuff you do here in secret. Besides aren't you supposed to keep all that doctor, patient stuff in the hospital?"

"It's not ever going to be your office if I strangle you." Tsunade fumed for a moment before she smiled wickedly. "It's not yours is it?"

"My what?" Naruto asked, obviously baffled by Tsunade's question.

"WHAT!" Sakura screamed as she finally snapped out of her shocked state. "Naruto?! I would never! That's not even close to funny, besides I AM NOT PREGNANT!" Sakura yelled out.

'_Besides you have to actually have sex sometime to get pregnant.'_ She thought to herself, causing her scowl to deepen.

Naruto flinched at Sakura's scream and edged slightly away from the now fuming kunoichi. His eyes suddenly widened as he finally figured out Tsunade's question and his face began to turn red as well. His embarrassment quickly faded as he saw the wide smile on Tsunade's face and he became somewhat angry.

"That wasn't very nice. If Hi…" Naruto paused, looked over to Sakura with an expression of tired irritation before turning back to Tsunade. "You know what, never mind. I've got more important things to do right now. I'm in something of a rush. I actually came over to hire out a Genin team to do some 'D-rank' work over at my place. I could take care of it myself with clones but I figured it'd be nice to hire a Genin team for this."

"Naruto you are a constant source of surprise even after all these years. Just what kind of mission are you looking for anyway?" Tsunade smiled.

"Mostly clean-up work, some painting and maybe some minor construction. The painting part is what made me decide to come here. I'm not much of a painter and that doesn't seem to be a problem I can fix easily by throwing clones at it. Well at least not without costing even more money than hiring a Genin team would. You know I might actually need two teams." Naruto mused.

"Sakura why don't you head over to my office at the hospital and I'll meet you there in a little while."

"O.K." Sakura said tiredly before giving Tsunade a quick bow and heading out of her office.

"I believe Kiba and his team haven't been assigned a mission in the past few days." Tsunade mused.

"Cool, so do I pay up front or is this something you bill me for?" Naruto asked with a smile.

---ooo---

Kiba met Naruto outside Narutos building early the next morning. He was followed by Akamaru and three young kids. All three were wearing Hitai-ates that were still bright and obviously new.

"So Tsunade really gave you a Genin team. Are they desperate for Jounin sensei or are you really that good." Naruto said with a smile.

"Yep she certainly did, about two months ago and you know I'm a good teacher. It was a pretty unusual class though. They actually had five teams completely pass. First time they ever got a class where fifty percent fully made Genin after the second round too." Kiba answered.

"They actually had 30 kids graduate first round from the Fall-Winter class? That is pretty impressive too. Looks like some of Iruka's programs are really starting to show results. I knew he'd make a great administrator at the academy." Naruto mused.

"So you actually bought this dump?" Kiba asked as he eyed the building.

"Hey! I got a pretty good deal on this place and it's in better shape than it looks."

"Pretty good deal eh? So how much did they pay you to take it then?" Kiba laughed.

"Give me a break already this is prime commercial and residential real estate. It's got five shops on the ground level, two of which are already rented out, enough space for three nice sized apartments or offices on the second floor, a huge storage area on the third floor and my apartment takes up the fourth floor along with some additional storage space."

"O.K., o.k. already, I'll take your word for it. Just what did you need done exactly anyway?"

"Well most of the bulk painting in the three empty shops is done already the only real task is that the trim painting needs to be done. I would whip up some clones and finish it off but I'm just not very good at trim work like that."

"Ah, yes, brute force, massive ignorance is more your style isn't it?" Kiba chuckled as he turned to his team and pointed to the pile of paint cans and brushes left from Narutos earlier work. "O.K. you guys have painted before, get to it."

"Massive ignorance? Damn it Kiba give me a break already." Naruto muttered

"Not a chance. Although I can't push you too much, Hinata would hurt me." Kiba chuckled some more.

"Oh please tell me that you're not going to give me a hard time about dating her."

"Nah…well maybe a little. After all it only took you like a decade to figure out that she liked you so you deserve a lot of grief about that. In fact that's one area I can probably harass you about forever and never upset Hinata. Just be grateful that a bunch of us aren't threatening you with that whole 'you're going to die if you break her heart' stuff." This time Kiba laughed loudly as Naruto rolled his eyes.

"Please like you know anything about a long term relationship. Have you dated any girl for more than a week?"

"Sure." Kiba paused before he laughed again. "Well I'm pretty sure I have anyway. Besides I've got a pretty good idea just how many times you've actually been able to spend time with Hinata. It wouldn't surprise me if I actually spent more time with the girls of most of my week-long relationships than the two of you have spent together. Heck Shino and I have spent more time with your girlfriend than you have since we still do a decent amount of missions together with Kurenai-sama as the old 'Team 8'."

"Shouldn't you guys be 'Team Kurenai'? You know that's the only problem I have with my relationship with Hinata. We hardly ever get to see each other." Naruto grumbled.

"Actually when they give the four of us a mission we are listed as 'Team Kurenai' but when it's just us we still think of ourselves as 'Team 8'. I wouldn't worry too much about the schedule, from what I've been hearing the Hokage has been talking about rotating a bunch of the long term assignments. Wouldn't surprise me if she's doing so as a favor to you." Kiba gave Naruto a knowing smirk.

"Yeah right. You guys have no idea how much that old bat loves to torment me." Naruto muttered.

There was a crash and both Naruto and Kiba looked over to see one of Kiba's Genin staring at Naruto wide eyed in shock with a clutter of painting equipment scattered at her feet."

"Y-y-you sh-shouldn't talk of the Hokage that way." The young girl with short dark hair stuttered out.

Naruto and Kiba looked at the small ninja for a moment and suddenly burst out laughing.

"Now if that wasn't just like Hinata years ago I'll eat Akamaru's collar." Kiba finally choked out, Akamaru glanced up at the sound of his name but seemed to quickly go back to sleep.

"Are you two laughing at me!" The little girl suddenly stood straight and became defiant.

"And now we have a small Ino or Sakura type." Naruto said, still laughing.

"Ami-san, don't take Naruto here too seriously, he's really quite close to the Hokage." Kiba said as he gave Naruto a sly glance before he knelt down to speak to Ami in a whisper. "Just don't ever say anything like that yourself. Naruto has a really, really thick skull so when the Hokage smacks him for his insolence it hardly causes him any brain damage. Well at least hardly any more damage, there probably isn't much left up there. I have no idea what Hinata-sensei sees in him."

"Hey! I heard that!" Naruto yelled out, although he suddenly smiled slyly to Ami. "If I were you I would be wondering why Kiba-sensei here can't keep a girl around for more than a week."

Kiba started to turn slightly red himself. From either embarrassment or anger, his companions couldn't tell. Although Naruto would have bet it was actually both.

"O.K. enough of this, please. At least not in front of my students anyway." Kiba finally said with a slight look of pleading in his eyes as he looked towards Naruto.

"Kiba-sensei?" Ami looked at her sensei with a puzzled look.

"Ami if you learn one thing from me, this may be the most important for living in the village, never challenge Naruto here in any way that could lead to a prank battle."

Ami's puzzled look deepened into outright confusion. She never expected to see her sensei hesitant about anything along these lines. In the two months she had been training with Kiba she had often noticed that he was something of a prankster himself. She glanced at Naruto who had trouble not laughing outright at the young kunoichi's expression.

"Maybe you should ask him about his first kiss someday." Naruto said to her with a truly evil smile.

Ami turned back to Kiba and was stunned to see her sensei become very pale.

"O.K., enough of this, get back to work." Kiba growled to Ami before looking to Naruto. "Thanks for that."

"Sorry, couldn't resist. Let me make it up to you." Naruto said.

With that Naruto motioned Kiba to follow him and he headed back outside as the Genin team began to start working on the painting. Naruto led him to an exterior set of stairs on the other side of the building. They quickly climbed up the flights of stairs leading to the fourth floor. Naruto unlocked his door and motioned Kiba to one of the chairs as he disappeared into his bedroom down the short hall. Naruto quickly reappeared holding a couple of bottles of sake that he handed to Kiba.

"What's this for?" Kiba asked suspiciously.

"Consider it something of an apology for putting you on the spot just now."

Kiba and Naruto spent a few hours talking about recent missions of theirs. They hadn't hung out together in several months and their reminiscences chewed up a bit more time than either of them realized until Narutos stomach growled.

"Looks like its lunch time." Naruto said with a grin.

"Yeah, I should check on the kids anyway. Sometimes I really love these types of D-rank missions." Kiba said with a big smile.

"Shouldn't you keep a closer eye on them? If that was my Genin days with 'Team 7', we probably would have destroyed something by now."

"Nah, these kids work great together, besides Akamaru is with them."

"Hey, if you don't mind ramen I'll treat you and your team to lunch."

"Sure, as long as you promise not to pull out any more embarrassing history."

"No problem, I think I've done enough damage to you already. You know it's only a matter of time before your Genins start asking you about that kiss." Naruto grinned evilly for a moment.

"Great, just great." Kiba sighed.

"Just let me grab another bottle for old man Teuchi."

"Another bottle? Just how much of this stuff do you have anyway?" Kiba asked as Naruto disappeared into his bedroom.

"Looks like a dozen left after this one." Naruto replied as he returned.

"You didn't knock over a liquor store or something did you?"

"What?...No, it's kind of a long story, I'll tell you as we head off to Ichiraku's." Naruto smiled as they both headed out and back downstairs.

They gathered up Kibas Genin team and Naruto surprised Kiba by heading off in a different direction than the quickest route to Ichiraku's.

"Hey isn't Ichiraku's that way?" Kiba asked.

"Yeah but I want to check something first." Naruto replied.

The small group headed off as Naruto began telling Kiba the story of the Gamabunta line of Sake.

---ooo---

Immediately after an uncomfortable breakfast at the Haruno residence Sakura's mother spoke to her daughter quietly once her father vanished.

"Sakura dear, I'm sorry but we discussed this while you were out yesterday and your father and I have decided that it's time you moved out on your own." Sakura's mother said with a slight frown.

Sakuras mouth fell open in shock. Sure they had discussed this a few times but they had always decided that she would stay for the time being.

"I said I was sorry and I'll buy you guys a new washing machine."

"We know but the truth is that you should simply be living on your own. You make more than enough money to rent an apartment if you don't have enough saved to buy a place of your own."

Sakura sat there stunned for a few moments as her mother busied herself in the kitchen. In a sort of daze she finished getting ready and headed off to the hospital. After finishing off a morning half shift and faced with a free afternoon Sakura found herself walking through the streets of Konoha. The whole moving out thing was depressing her. The more she thought about it the more she figured it was somehow Narutos fault. She decided that she should find him and give him an earful. She was dying to figure out what was going on with him lately and this was as good an excuse to pin him down and talk to him as any. Seeing it was lunch time she decided to head to Ichiraku's, that was the most likely place to find Naruto at this time after all. She was disappointed and irritated that he wasn't there so she couldn't finally give him that earful she had basically promised herself. The fact that blaming her blond friend for her recent troubles was even more irrational than she typically acted towards him was beyond her. Scowling, she decided to head off to his apartment next. It didn't take long before she was knocking on his apartment door. Her irritation grew as she stood there and nobody answered. She decided to head out to the little balcony, walk along the roof and wall to peek into his bedroom window to make sure that he hadn't decided to take a nap. He was ridiculously lazy after all she often thought to herself. Not seeing him she growled with a murmur of irritation as she decided to head off to Tsunades office.

---ooo---

Naruto along with Kiba and his team drifted seemingly aimlessly through the streets. Kiba laughed a few times at some of Narutos comments as they walked before Naruto finally stopped in front of a medium sized apartment building that had a for sale sign on it.

"Don't tell me you're looking to buy another building." Kiba stated.

"Just looking, I'd over extend myself if I bought any more real estate right now. It's an eight unit building that is only half rented out. Apparently it's been for sale for months and no one is interested. It might be a good opportunity in a few more months once my financial reserves recover. Just hang out here for a few minutes." Naruto said as he disappeared into the building.

"Man, I never thought Naruto would ever become this successful." Kiba muttered.

"Sensei?" Ami asked, looking up to Kiba.

"Oh nothing, just Naruto was just about the worst ninja to ever squeak out of the academy."

"Really? But he's like the greatest ninja in Konoha." Ami stated.

"Trust me when he was your age you would never have known. I actually fought him during my first Chunin exam."

"What happened?" All three of his Genin asked at once.

"I made a big mistake and underestimated him, so he kicked my ass. Although he also got lucky." Kiba chuckled a bit until Naruto came out. "So?"

"Heating and water problems. They're definitely asking too much but I can wait. Lets get to Ichiraku's!" Naruto hurried off causing the others to practically run as they caught up.

Little did they know that their lunch was destined to become quite interesting.

---ooo---

Tsunade looked at Sakura with irritation as the young woman ranted about her troubles. Something was definitely getting under the pink haired girls skin. Tsunade frowned slightly.

"Listen Sakura, it's pretty much lunch time, you seem a little too focused on Naruto about all of this. Why don't we head over to Ichiraku's and grab a bite to eat. Maybe we'll find him there and we can straighten this out." The Hokage said.

"I've already been there, he wasn't there and I tried his apartment as well." Sakura replied.

"Really now? Hmm, well I'm hungry and it's still the most likely place to find him."

"O.k. then." Sakura said with a resigned tone of voice.

Tsunade almost continued talking but decided against it. With a few commands to a passing clerk the two women headed out of the Hokage tower.

---ooo---

Kiba's Genin team looked on at Naruto with a mixture of shock, awe and amazement as their sensei's friend practically inhaled his fifth bowl of ramen while the rest of them were still working on their first. Kiba looked at his team and chuckled. As Naruto was waiting for his sixth bowl a pair of hands covered his eyes and he heard a soft feminine giggle.

"Hey!" Naruto reached up and grabbed the hands as he smiled. "I thought you weren't supposed to be back for a few more days?"

"You were supposed to guess who I was." Hinata said with a small pout as she took her hands away from Narutos face and sat down next to him. "We were relieved early and I figured I'd find you here. I was surprised to see you eating with Kiba and his team."

"Actually he's treating us to lunch." Kiba stated between mouthfuls of noodles.

"Treating all of you?" Hinata looked at Naruto.

"Yep, he hired us out for a D-rank to help him finish painting his new building." Kiba said, smirking as Hinata's eyes widened.

"New building?" She asked.

"Well you see, I ran into my land lord the other day as he was looking the building over. He was looking to sell it so I used most of the money I've gotten from the sake sales as a down payment, got a mortgage from my bank and bought the place."

"NARUTO!" Sakura yelled out completely stopping all conversation at the ramen bar as she stormed up to the restaurant.

"Sakura?" Naruto asked, very much confused at his friends rage.

"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm homeless and my favorite outfit is ruined and the washing machine is ruined and and AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"

"Now wait one damn minute, I have no idea what you're talking about and I don't see how any of that stuff could possibly have anything to do with me."

"I don't care! It's always your fault."

"WHAT!"

Everyone else was standing or sitting there rather stunned at Sakura's accusations, even Tsunade was looking at her apprentice wide eyed.

"Sakura you should explain yourself." Tsunade said in a quiet voice that had a frosty overtone that stopped Sakura from ranting further.

"Well I haven't really seen him for months and he's been acting strange the few times I did spot him and when I finally see him he basically ignores me. I can't believe he had Ino deliver his Holiday present to me. So when I saw him the day before yesterday and he blew me off I decided to follow him to see what was going on. I'm not sure exactly how but I got covered by cement, which wound up ruining my parents washing machine, which wound up getting me kicked out of my home this morning and I just know it's Narutos fault!" Sakura all but snarled despite looking like she was on the verge of tears.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Naruto practically yelled

"You know Naruto you did say that you were thinking about setting up some apartments in your building? Couldn't you rent one out to Sakura?" Kiba asked, causing Hinata to gasp softly and Naruto to glare at him.

"So not helping Kiba." Naruto answered.

Hinata flashed a brief but extremely intense glare at Kiba. He paled as he immediately began to regret his little jibe at Naruto. Hinata was just about the sweetest most forgiving person he had ever even encountered throughout his life but the instance of anger he saw flash behind her pale eyes was downright spooky. Additionally Kiba was one of the few people in Konoha who knew that Hinata also had the most unreal determination and could in fact, on rare occasions be quite vicious when she wanted or needed to be.

"You own a building with apartments? I thought you were talking about fixing up that dump of your apartment when you were looking to hire a Genin team. When did you buy a building anyway? You know what never mind I don't need to know the details, this is great! Where is it and when can you get me a set of keys to one of the apartments?" Sakura started babbling her rage seemingly completely gone.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Naruto held up his hands as he glared one more time at Kiba before looking back to Sakura.

"What?" She demanded and her green eyes seemed to become slightly greener.

"Well first off, none of the apartments are going to be ready to be rented out any time soon. That's even if I decide to set the space up as apartments anyway. I've been leaning more towards setting them up as office space."

"Naruto are you telling me you aren't going to help out one of your best friends when she desperately needs help?" Sakura growled.

"I don't have any trouble helping but I really don't see why 'helping' means taking you on as a tenant. Surely there's plenty of other ways I can help you. In fact if you're going to ask any of your friends to rent out a place to you why not ask Sasuke? I own a single building, that needs a lot of repairs, he owns several blocks and last I heard he was desperate for tenants. In fact I think that would be an excellent way for the two of you to start patching up your friendship. Especially since I don't think any of the bathrooms on the second floor even work."

"Yes, that sounds like a much better idea." Hinata said frostily as she gave Kiba one last brief glare before her eyes coldly settled on Sakura.

Sakura was about to protest until she looked at Hinata. Her first reaction was to tell Hinata to mind her own business as this had nothing to do with her but the look in the young Hyuga's eyes stopped Sakura cold. It was an odd mixture of calculated irritation, contempt and even a touch of distaste. To make matters even worse Sakura was certain every nuance in Hinata's expression was not only intentional but purposely obvious. Somehow Hinata made Sakura feel as though she was about three feet shorter than the pale eyed women.

"Um, I'm sorry Hinata but I don't see why this would concern you. This really isn't any of your business." Sakura replied quietly as she forced herself not to look down.

"As far as I am concerned it is very much my business. Friend or not I do not like the idea of you living in the same building as my boyfriend. I think that you are not a very good friend to him and I am concerned that you would greatly take advantage of his friendship. As Naruto explained there really isn't any place there that is suitable to live in other than his apartment, which you most certainly are not staying at as long as he lives there. Additionally he gave a much better alternative to you than imposing yourself on his first real estate business. It really shouldn't be his problem that you can not bring yourself to ask Sasuke or any of your other friends for a similar favor. I believe that this conversation is now finished." Hinata gave Sakura one last glance of irritation before shaking her head slowly and turning around to sit on one of the stools next to Naruto.

Sakura was rather stunned as she looked at Hinatas back. Hinata ordered a bowl of miso ramen and proceeded to completely ignore Sakura.

"B-b-boyfriend?" Sakura finally stuttered out softly as she looked wide eyed at Naruto.

"Well yeah, Hinata and I have been dating for a few months now." Naruto said with his classic grin.

"A few months?" Sakura said as her mouth fell open.

"Sakura, it's quite common knowledge that Naruto and Hinata have been dating. "I can't believe that you didn't know already." Tsunade said with an odd smile.

"You knew too?" Sakura's eye's widened slightly as she turned toward Tsunade.

"Are you kidding? I was there when dopey here finally found out that she was attracted to him." Tsunade said with a large smile as Naruto and Hinata both blushed slightly.

"Oh. I'm sorry Naruto, Hinata. I'll come up with something. I could always crash at Ino's place for a few days." Sakura stated numbly.

With that she turned and wandered off. Hinata smiled softly while everyone else stared after Sakura surprised by Sakura's passive reaction.

"So tell me more about this new business venture." Hinata said putting down her chopsticks and turning towards Naruto.

Naruto smiled. He really had no idea what was going on with Sakura but right now he really didn't care. Everything else in his life was going very well. He smiled as he looked at Hinata and began to give her further details about his building.

'_This is looking to be an even better year than I thought.'_ Naruto thought to himself as his smile got slightly wider.

---ooo---

A/N – Regarding Kiba's first kiss, that's a reference to section 7 in chapter 4 of the story 'Catch 22' by The Sh33p author ID 140034 here on FanFiction. To be honest I'm not especially happy with the ending of this chapter and I don't think the beginning is as smooth as it should be either. Sorry about that but having most of this chapter sitting around getting nowhere for so long was beginning to get to me.

T.J.

---ooo---

- This could be considered something of an Omake -

As for what happened to the Akatsuki for this story to take place the way it did...

Pein stood on one of the fingertips of the King of Hell statue. A writhing ball of glowing light hung in the air with twisting tendrils of energy connecting it to the huge statue. A young woman was suspended in the center of the ball of light. She was battered and bruised, her clothing torn and burned in various placed but her Waterfall headband was remarkably unscuffed on her right arm. Her light green hair hung limply as the energy wrapped itself around her. Suddenly her pale red eyes popped open and she seemed to silently snarl as those eyes began to glow, shifting to a still muted but harsh red. She struggled mightily and with great effort was able to slowly move her arm. After several long minutes she managed to pull a small scroll out of her waistband. Her hand tightened into a fist around the scroll, causing her sharp nails to cut into the palm of her hand. Her blood soon covered the scroll and she shifted her grip on it allowing it to unfurl. The long piece of heavily inscribed paper stretched out into the channel of energy that tied her to the statue. Once it was completely unrolled she let it go and pushed as much of her chakra that she could into the flow of energy around her.

_'If this doesn't work I'm only going to die sooner.'_ She thought to herself.

She wasn't certain that even bothered her all that much but something in her refused to give up. She may have been hated and shunned at her home but she had a tenacity common to all Jinchuuriki that wouldn't allow her to simply give up and surrender to the jutsu that was trying to steal the demon inside her at the cost of her life.

That pulse of her chakra had finally alerted the gathered Akatsuki that something was wrong. Unfortunately for them it was too late.

She had known for a few years now that they would eventually come for her and she had been preparing that scroll for months. It was in some way similar to a typical explosive tag. It was also loosely related to typical sealing scrolls, only this particular scroll partially sealed itself. In reality it was much, much larger than it appeared to be as it fluttered towards the mouth of the King of Hell statue. For months she had been pouring as much of her chakra into the scroll as she could every night before she went to sleep. Building a truly frightening amount of her tainted chakra into the scroll.

The young woman smiled as the end of the scroll entered the mouth of the statue. A moment later her chakra imbued in the paper reacted to the traces of chakra from the other tailed beasts already sealed up within the statue.

The resulting explosion tore through the jutsu containing the young woman. The statue shattered and the backlash ripped apart the minds of every member of the Akatsuki performing the jutsu. Every single one of them died almost instantly. As they fell the cavern began to collapse on top of the rubble of the statue. Pein himself lasted a little longer than the other members but a moment later the demonic energies flowing through the Yahiko body poured into the psychic connection to Nagato, killing him as well. Without Nagato the other five bodies of Pein in their capsules all became truly dead, the way they were before they became Pein.

Several days later, the mouth of the cavern was still smoldering. There was a scraping sound of rock as one rather large rock was shifted aside. The young woman with red eyes and green hair smiled as she saw daylight. Her smile instantly vanished as she felt another small jolt of pain from her split and swollen lip. To put it mildly she was a mess. Her right leg was still broken from the explosion. It had been unable to heal like the many other breaks throughout her body because of the angles of some of the rubble she had been buried under. As she pulled herself completely clear she was able to twist around, sit up and pull her leg back into its proper shape. The flare of pain from doing that washed away all the other pain throughout her body for a few moments. Still her smile returned a few short moments later as she felt the bone begin to knit together properly. Even her smile didn't hurt as much as the swelling faded and the split began to close up.

She simply sat there for several hours waiting for the aches and pains to fade. Somewhere in that time she dug out a beat up ration bar out of her even more beat up weapons pouch. Although a bit flatter than normal it would still do it's job. She rummaged around a bit more, finding a single slightly bent kunai, a couple of explosive notes and one cracked smoke bomb still in the pouch. She frowned at the kunai, it would never throw true again but it still had a decent edge. Her frown deepened as she looked over her two remaining explosive notes. The paper tags looked o.k. The chakra she had bound into the paper didn't seem to have lost any of its stability but she was definitely going to get rid of them, once she found some paper and ink to make replacements first anyway. The cracked smoke bomb got barely a glance before she tossed it over her shoulder to bounce among the fallen rocks of the collapsed cavern behind before it vanished into a small crack.

Once the dry ration bar was gone she ran her hands through a short set of seals and cupped her hands. A moment later pure clean water was pulled out of the ground and filled her hands. She slowly drank the double handful of water and sighed once she finished. Her thoughts turned to the people of her village. Not one of them had even looked her way when the Akatsuki came to claim her. Although more than a few had nothing but smiles for the now dead assholes in their black cloaks with the red clouds.

_'Screw them all.'_ She thought to herself.

She was pretty sure she was somewhere in Rain. She had no idea if any of the sealed demons had survived the destruction of the statue and wasn't about to stick around to find out. Waterfall had pretty good intelligence on the other tailed beasts that she had been a part of analyzing. Somehow the Kazekage had survived the removal of his demon, even though the spies from Waterfall had been unable to find out how. Kumo still had it's eight tails Jinchuuriki and Konoha still held the nine tails.

Her smile slowly returned. A moment later her Hitai-ate was no longer tied to her arm. She quickly hid it under a loose rock.

_'Woo Hoo, missing nin status here I come. Although they probably all think I'm dead now and nobody back at Waterfall can touch me so even if they eventually find out that I survived I doubt I'll have to worry about any sort of hunter squad trying to track me down.'_ She thought as her eyes seemed to sparkle slightly as the realization that she was free sank into her.

She wouldn't go to Fire or Lightning, she simply wasn't willing to head to any place that had Jinchuuriki more powerful than her own. Wind was out as well. Whatever they did to save their Kazekage indicated that they knew a bit more about the tailed beasts than she did. Besides she hated sand. There was some bad blood between Earth and Waterfall. She could probably avoid being found out by any Waterfall investigation with ease if she disappeared there but her experiences had left her with a strong dislike of Iwa ninja.

A few more moments of thought and she decided to head South. She'd cut through River country and head out across the water to Tea country. Tea was friendly with Konoha but she ought to be able to make a living there as a mercenary ninja while still keeping a low profile. She loved her hair so that would stay it's pale green color but she was getting some sunglasses. She was also most definitely finding something other than white to wear, maybe a nice blue bikini, her smile got wider. She really enjoyed warm beaches, of which Tea country had plenty of.

She continued to smile as she stood up, gave one last sour glance to the Northeast before turning her back on her home and heading South to a new life.


End file.
